Empty prom­ises will prove costly

PRES­I­DENT Cyril Ramaphosa at­tended a church ser­vice yes­ter­day after a suc­cess­ful man­i­festo launch and Jan­uary 8 State­ment at Dur­ban’s Moses Mab­hida sta­dium. Ramaphosa had KwaZulu-Natal MEC for eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment Sihle Zikalala by his side, as has been the case for the en­tire week as the pres­i­dent vis­ited dif­fer­ent parts of the prov­ince.

The ANC has its fair share of trou­bles and Ramaphosa again ac­knowl­edged it yes­ter­day but there is no deny­ing that the party achieved its tar­get of fill­ing up the sta­dium on Satur­day and show­ing that it is still a force to be reck­oned with.

Ramaphosa will want this mo­men­tum to con­tinue un­til the elec­tions but the DA and the IFP, es­pe­cially in KZN, will test the rul­ing party’s abil­ity to win big in the prov­ince.

The state cap­ture com­mis­sion, the VBS bank scan­dal and the state of some of the ANC-run mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties will be fur­ther tests for the party which has promised a re­newal in the way it will op­er­ate go­ing for­ward.

If these prom­ises are not de­liv­ered then it could prove costly. If they ma­te­ri­alise then Ramaphosa’s vi­sion of a ma­jor­ity vic­tory at the polls could be­come re­al­ity and prove to be a strate­gic master­piece.